


A Decepticon Traitor in King Arthur's Court

by Area51Fugitive



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: And the Alliterative Morte Arthure, Based on A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Execution, Mentions of past child death, Mentions of past violence against a child, Not to be confused with Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Particularly Brythonic, Post-Season/Series 01 AU, Revenge, Robot/Human Relationships, Seeker culture, Starscream's Family, Strangers to Lovers, Swords & Sorcery, Takes place while Starscream is rogue, Threefold Death, Vos Culture, mentions of Orcadian mythology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 05:04:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17298308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Area51Fugitive/pseuds/Area51Fugitive
Summary: After investigating a mound containing a mysterious glowing orb, a rogue Starscream finds himself in what seems to be an alternate past of Earth where monsters, magic, and strange humans dressed like minicons called "knights" roam about.  One of these knights is an unnerving femme who, through underhanded means, manages to rope him in to aiding her in her quest.  But what is she trying to do?  Who even is she?  And how in Primus's name will Starscream ever get out of this magical nonsense and back to his own world?





	A Decepticon Traitor in King Arthur's Court

**Author's Note:**

> An utterly shameless Sue-fic, after avoiding writing them like the plague for fifteen years, wherein an Arthurian warrior chick eventually makes out with the whiny traitor-bot. I'm writing about giant evil robots and the women who love them. I've given up the right to have shame. I ride into Valhalla, shiny and chrome.

**Chapter 1**

**The Dragon Mound**

 

     It was a deceptively innocuous looking thing, this structure Starscream had found on an island he was hiding on.  A mound raised in the earth, barely reaching fifty feet tall.  Not that large, even by fleshling standards.  A smooth half-sphere rising from the earth, surrounded almost festively with a ring of carefully arranged stones.  To anyone else it would have been a quaint, almost pretty sight.

     To Starscream, a true son of Vos, the barrow was a thing of absolute horror.

* * *

     In the old days, before even his grandsires and grandcarriers had emerged, such burials were reserved for only the worst of criminals.  It was a barbaric practice, even for the day, but those of Vos had prided themselves on being harder than the weak mechs of neighboring cities.  If a Vosic citizen had committed one of the worst of crimes, be it murder of a fellow citizen, permanently grounding another citizen, rape, treason, blasphemy, or improper hospitality, they would be sentenced to the ground death.

     It was designed to be a flier’s worst nightmare.  The condemned would have their wings bound before being dragged along Vos’s single ground road—a road created solely for this purpose.  The Damned Walk.  Once they reached the city’s center, a rack awaited them.  The condemned was bound face-down to this rack and their wings would be removed.  Properly, with numbing agents and a skilled surgeon if the condemned repented.  Cruelly, with blunt instruments and as slowly as possible if the criminal died unrepentant, or if their penance was refused by the Winglord.  They would be left on the rack with their life’s fluids slowly draining from their back, left to whatever mercy the surrounding crowd had to offer, until they finally expired.  Some went quickly from shock.  Others lingered until their frames were almost completely drained, or, as in the case of the traitor Skyclimber, until the crowd tore them to pieces.  They would be left for another cycle, hanging pitifully on the rack, until they were finally removed and taken to the barrows.

     The barrows were kept outside of the city proper, avoided by most.  When the empty shell of the deceased criminal was removed from Vos, still kept facing downwards, their own barrow already awaited them.  A slab of rusted metal lay inside upon which the corpse was chained.  Still facing downwards.  Never to so much as face the sky again for the rest of eternity.  The entrance to the barrow would be sealed, and further covered until the condemned had at least twice their body-width of solid metal between themselves and the sky.  Forever denied the air.

     Starscream’s grandcarrier had told him this when he was a fledgling.  Against the wishes of his sire and carrier both, she had taken him for a walk through the barrows, explaining what they were, explaining what had happened to the seekers within.

     “My sire ordered the last of them,” she had told him as he clutched her arm in terror and fought his urge to take off back for home, “A femme.  Young little thing.  She had spent too much time outside of the city.  Took in too many of the outside world’s ideas.  She began campaigning for an end to the Winglords and for the people of Vos to choose their own leaders.  As if any proper Vosic citizen would want anyone but _us_ ruling.  We, the Winglords, who were blessed by Primus of the sky!  She was of course brought to trial for her treason and blasphemy.  My sire was willing to have mercy, for she was, as I said, very young, and I suppose she had good intentions with her foolishness.  Well, my little star, I’m sure you’ve been told how flying on a jet stream of good intentions can fling you straight into the Pit if you aren’t careful.  My grandsire, of course, tried to get her to see reason, to cease her treacherous words, but she would have none of it.  Unrepentant, she of course faced the more painful death.  I suppose that seeing one so young suffer a fate so messy must have horrified my sire, though I believe that a traitor deserves no less for speaking out against their rightful Winglord, and he moved to have the ground death eliminated entirely, even the less painful method.  There was protest, of course, we are a people of proud tradition and don’t you ever forget this, but our strongest tradition is, rightfully, obedience to the Winglord and so my sire had his way.”

     Starscream’s grandcarrier had paused in front of one of the barrows.  It was the farthest one out from the city.  _The last one_ , Starscream thought.  His grandcarrier tilted her head thoughtfully as she looked upon it.

     “Cometswift,” his grandcarrier said, "That was the femme's name."  Starscream looked up at her in alarm.  She had laughed a little, dark and humorless.  It would stay in Starscream’s head, that laugh, as while she had lived his grandcarrier had rarely been a femme of humor.

     “Yes,” his grandcarrier said, “We share a name.  I suppose her death must have had a profound effect on my poor sire if he not only put a stop to one of our most ancient traditions, but also named his heir for the dead little traitor.

     Again, I do not agree with his decision.  Those who defy the Winglords should face the ultimate punishment.  But I had enough respect for my sire and what he must have went through to never get around to reversing it myself.  Softsparked or no, one’s sire is one’s sire.”

     His grandmother frowned.  “Though perhaps I should have,” she paused to look back at the city, “for I fear that our citizens have grown weak and soft without such harsh traditions to remind us of who we are.  Your own creators, my own _daughter_ , did not want you to even learn of this place.  They said they would tell you when you were older, but I know they are too soft.”

     His grandmother had looked directly into his optics then, and although he had always had a healthy respect of her, it was the only time that Starscream would ever truly fear the elderly femme.  She placed her servos on his shoulders and gripped them tightly, just below the point of pain.

     “Eldest grandson,” she had said, “You will be Winglord one day.  That day may be eons from now, but you _will_ be Winglord.  I have failed with my daughter.  I was too close to her.  I could not bear to be as harsh as I should have been.  I was too busy trying to care for my child, not putting enough effort into raising the next Lord of Vos.  I will not fail with you.”

     Her face had drawn in to his so closely.  He had been frozen.  “You will be strong, my grandson.  You will bring Vos back to how she was.  You will make certain that she never grows lazy and decadent as the other cities.  You will not simply cover uncared-for rusting with gilding, but treat it with the proper oil of tradition, discipline, and strength.  Work to bring back the old ways, even the ground death.

     _Make us a people to be feared again._ ”

* * *

     That had been a lifetime ago, before Earth, before the war, before serving as the cowardly Sentinel Prime’s bodyguard, before everything, and yet the memory was burnt into Starscream’s processor like base programming.  Even this primitive construct, built by fleshlings and already a ruin after barely a millennium and a half, made every one of his grandcarrier’s words echo through his memory banks.

     It was disgraceful.  He, Starscream, last of the great Winglords of Vos, struck with fear by a glorified ball of mud.  Built by tiny, ephemeral creatures he could crush beneath his pedes like so many chromegrubs.  He sneered.

     “Such a _pathetic_ object.  Barely even a structure.  Just some piled dirt and rocks.  Looks more like something a sparkling would slap together from metal shavings than an actual _thing_.”

     He refused to be afraid of this little hill.  It was not one of the barrows of the Vosic damned.  It was just a mudball that some skin jobs had scraped up out of superstition that their dead might haunt them if they did not.  It was something to laugh at, to see as a quaint curiosity at best.  He would not let himself be cowed by _this_.

     Starscream had come to this place on the search for energon deposits, but that goal had begun to fade from his mind the moment he found the barrow.  He forgot his original quest entirely as he approached the hill with more apprehension than he cared to admit to himself.  This thing was _nothing_ like what great Vos had built.  He would not let anything of his proud and mighty home, not even its darker aspects, be in any way comparable to the wretched constructs of _humans_.  The barrows of his home had been gruesome, but they had been things of _history_ , things of _weight_ and _gravitas_.  They _deserved_ to stir strong emotions.  That was what they were _for_.  This thing?  No.  He would not allow this pitiful lump to invoke what rightfully belonged to the monuments of his home.

     His back struts aligned perfectly straight, his wings swung proudly back, he strode toward the barrow.  Try to scare _him_ , would it?  Starscream, Winglord of Vos?  He wouldn’t be afraid!  As calmly as possible, he walked up to the mound.  He even laid a shaking servo, a _barely_ shaking servo, upon it.  There.  He’d done it.  And no ghost, fleshling king or Vosic damned, came for him.  Ha.

     He smiled, the grin just barely touched by nervousness, and leaned against the barrow.  He’d done it, he’d conquered this pathetic human hill.  It was funny, he was starting to feel all warm inside.  And outside.  On the side leaning against the barrow.

     With a yelp (a _small_ yelp, mind), Starscream jumped back from the mound.  He stared at it for a moment in bewilderment.  _What in the world?_   Gingerly, he reached out a servo to touch the mound again.  The unusual warmth was indeed there, sinking into his outstretched servo.

     _Odd…_

     He pressed himself against the mound, whatever fear he had left dissipating as scientific curiosity filled him.  The mound had not been this warm when he first touched it.  He hadn’t sensed it with any of his stimulus receptors before, either.  He was fairly certain.  His processor buzzed with all of the possibilities.

     Was the barrow built over some sort of natural hot spring?  Maybe it wasn’t a barrow at all.  This could have been a primitive attempt to contain the steam and heat of a hot spring for health and recreational purposes.  If there was one thing he could say about humans, they were aware that they were filthy creatures and would go to great lengths to be, or even just to feel, clean.

     Maybe there was some sort of deep fissure in the earth and the humans, being ignorant creatures, may have thought that it was some portal to the Pit and built this mound to contain the “evil forces.”

     Or, and this thought brought Starscream back to himself, the source wasn’t some sort of geological anomaly at all.

     Maybe it was energon.

     His original purpose for being at this location rushed back to him.  He had sensed a strong energy reading around here, had he not?  One that he thought might be a large, untapped energon deposit?  It could have been exposed from erosion.  Humans had a fascination for shiny, glowing things, even though they could not devour them.  They may have believed that a deposit of energon might have been a gift from the gods or something along those lines and built this mound as a shrine.  The stone structures around the mound, stone rings were constructed as sacred things by the ancient humans of this area, were they not?  They would arrange them to align with celestial bodies and events.  Maybe these were meant to mark out where a “fallen star” was thought to be.  Primitive humans could have mistaken energon for starstuff.

     He kept one servo on the mound to search for hot spots and began to circumnavigate the mound.  It seemed to get warmer as he went on.  That was promising.  He kept on.  Slowly, slowly, no need to rush.  He had to approach this with care.

     _There_.

     On the side of the mound opposite from where he had been facing was an opening.  Quite a large one.  For a thing built for and by miniscule fleshlings, this opening would fit him without any trouble.  He would not even have to lower his wings to get in.

     _Well.  At least I know it’s not a barrow._   Humans did not often leave the resting places of their dead wide open.  With few exceptions, living humans did not want to interact with the dead in any form, nor did they want the dead to interact with them.  An odd concept to him as each Winglord of Vos had their chassis carefully placed on a spire of the city to inspire their people even after deactivation, faces and arms forever raised to the sky, but what else could one expect from creatures that wallowed in mud.  They knew the shame of their existence.

     And yet, despite this comforting confirmation, that fear began to creep back in as he stared at the mound’s opening.  His grandcarrier’s tales of seekers being dragged beneath the ground to never taste the open air again, of the horror experienced by the murderer Airslice who had not quite been dead when he was chained and buried and how his screams were said to still echo from within his barrow…they were all flooding through him again.

     It was completely illogical.  The mound’s opening was wide and there was no door to slam shut.  There was no one around to bury him within if he walked inside.  And, to top it all off, the walls of the mound, from what he could see, were relatively thin.  And they were made of earth.  He had a far better chance of tripping and falling straight through the walls than he did of having the opening collapse or otherwise shut in any way.

     He straightened himself up again.  He would not be scared of this damned thing.  The source of the unusual warmth was just within.  He could feel it.  There was a sort of… _pulse_ coming from within the mound that demanded his exploration.  If he looked closely, he could just faintly make out a glow from within.  It was dim, very dim, and appeared to be green instead of any color he knew energon to come in, but he could _see_ it.

     He stepped forward, walking straight for the object.  It was an… _orb_ of some sort.  Yes, a glowing green orb.  He could really feel the heat radiating off of it, now.  And yet, although that heat could be felt even through earthen walls, it was not overwhelming.  It was actually rather… _pleasant_.  Very odd.  The orb looked like it could just about fit in the palm of his hand, but must have been rather large to the humans who had placed it here.  And they had placed it themselves, for it rested upon a pedestal carved with strange markings.  Glyphs?  Runes?  He did not know much about Earth’s various scripts save what was useful, and certainly barely a thing about dead languages.

     His curiosity needed to be sated.  He set about downloading everything he could on the history of language and writing from the islands he had fled to.  It took an aggravatingly long time.  In just a little less than the time it had taken for him to reach maturity, these islands had developed and discarded _several_ languages and writing systems.  It was no wonder humans were so scattered and divided.  If a group was separated for barely more than a few years, its entire identity could have changed and they would be barely recognizable to the people they once belonged to.

     Starscream stared hard at the markings on the pedestal, gently running a single digit over them.  His processor was rapidly comparing them to what he had been able to download from the internet and various private databases.  It was a jumbled mess.  A few Latin characters here, Futhark runes there, and even one or two bits of Ogham.  Finding out the sounds that the characters represented didn’t make things much easier.  The words were as chaotic as their writing.  Latin, Archaic Irish, Old Welsh, Norn, Common Brythonic, Old Norse, even…was that _modern_ English?

     _This has to be a hoax_ , Starscream thought, _Someone found this mound years before I did and vandalized it_.

     Still, he had to know what it said.  He leaned in closer and put more power into his translators.

     “’H-here…’” Starscream glared at the words harder, willing them to make sense.  “’Here…is the…switch?’  No.  ‘Here is the _key_ …’”

     His eyes were fixated on the markings.  His translators were working harder than they ever had before.

     _There_.

     He straightened up triumphantly, one digit on the markings, elated at what he’d done.

     “’Here is the key to legend, to the once and future destiny of the cousin peoples.  The key to the finding of the red dragon and that monarch bearing its name.  The key to the cousins’ prime.  The bane of Chronos.”

     So proud was Starscream of his victory that he did not notice the brief flash that the orb above gave off.  He stood up from where he had hunched over and looked with pride at the markings on the pedestal.  True, translating them had not done him any practical good, nor had they told him much of anything useful about the orb, but it had been a challenge that he had met and defeated and that was what was important.

     _I’m done with this whole thing_ , he thought cheerily as he walked out to the exit.  _And I don’t think I’ll be letting any more human constructs frighten me with mere curiosities._

     The air was strange when he emerged.  It was the first thing he noticed.  Seekers, being built to track down energon, were very perceptive of changes in the air.  Their senses were highly acute.  They could taste impurities even in distilled energon, could smell it from ridiculous distances, could even hear its unique vibrations in certain conditions.  The air currently blowing through his vents was definitely of a different quality than the air he had been circulating just a few minutes ago.  There were less trace pollutants within.  Far less.  He had not realized how irritating that they had been until they were finally gone.

     Had the wind changed?  There didn’t seem to be much of it.  Nothing that could account for this amount of change.  He looked about himself.  He was struck by the stones comprising the circle surrounding the mound.  Had they looked like that before?  They were in the same place and comprised of the same type of rock, but they were… _different_.  They were less pitted, less craggy.  They were not smooth by any means, they were created with far too primitive means to be so, but nevertheless they seemed as if they had only recently been carved.

     A trick of the optics.  It seemed darker now than it had when he’d first entered the mound.  Perhaps that was it.  Then again, he wasn’t in the mound for _that_ long.  His processor had taken a while to translate the marks on the pedestal, but that had still only taken a few minutes.  By the sun’s positioning, it would seem that a few _hours_ had passed.

     Starscream looked out to the distance.  Something was wrong.  The island that he was on was flat, with little in the way of trees or other distinguishing markers, but something was… _off_.  He couldn’t put his digit on it, but everything in his processor was screaming that something was definitely, horribly wrong.

     He tried to connect to the internet again, to see if any strange phenomena was being reported.  Nothing.  Not only was there no news of anything having occurred, there was no internet whatsoever.  Anywhere in the world.  He could connect just a moment ago.  He was able to connect while on the Nemesis and too far away for the humans to even consider that anyone could connect.  But here, now, nothing.

     He tried reaching for other connections.  The comms of a few mechs he could still just barely trust enough to not report communication.  Knockout, a few of the Vehicons.

     Nothing.

     In desperation, he reached out to anything, everything.  He sent out distress signals, angry messages, panicked pleas to anyone who might be listening.  Even to the Autobots.  Even to the humans.  Even to _Megatron_.

     Nothing.

     He ran back inside the mound, to the orb.  That was it, the orb must have done something!  When in doubt, always blame the mysterious glowing object of dubious origin.  There was the pedestal and the orb…

     Gone.

     “Gone?”  The word popped out of Starscream’s vocalizer in a high-pitched squeak that would have been embarrassing had there been anyone around to hear, but alas, there was no one.  It seemed the world had completely gone, and the only clue had vanished with it.

     He was alone.  No orb.  No Decepticons.  No Autobots.  No humans.  No internet or database access.  No idea if energon existed in this…pocket dimension?

     No.  He refused to just die.  There had to be something!

     He walked out of the mound quickly.  He had to search through the immediate area, first.  No transforming, no flying.  He would not even run.  He would be controlled.  He had to conserve as much of his energy as possible in case he could not replenish it.  He was nothing if not a crafty mech.  He scanned the area.  At the very least, this place had a magnetic field.  North.  He’d go north first.  That would be easiest for now.  Just follow the flow.

     He set off for the north to search for…anything, really.  A signal, another orb, hopefully energon deposits if he was _really_ lucky.

     At the very least, he would not have to worry about running into enemies in this isolated dimension.

* * *

     Crouching silently behind a stone, a lone figure watched as the giant armored man strode out from the Dragon Mound, heading north.  Her ice blue eyes searched for weak spots in his armor.  It was of a make that she had never seen before.  It seemed to cling to the man’s body like a second layer of skin.  Even the face guard almost appeared to move with the giant’s expressions.  Clever craft, sorcery, or both?  She’d have to study him further.

     She kept herself low, creeping out from behind the stone.  The grass had grown high and she was wearing a tunic of near the exact same color as it.  She should be able to duck and hide fairly easily.  She had to keep up with this creature that the Dragon Mound had summoned.  He looked strong.  Even fully armored, he was graceful, and so was likely a fighter of skill.  Even unskilled, his sheer size would prove beneficial in a fight.

     She would have him.  She needed him for what she planned to do.  She needed that strength, that imposing presence.  She needed something like him on her side.  And she knew she would get what she needed, no matter what she had to do.

     The Dragon Mound had summoned him just for her.

**Author's Note:**

> All the best love stories begin with one partner being magically summoned like some sort of demon. Them's the rules.


End file.
